1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related generally to electronic/software backup and more particularly to simultaneous and seamless examination of such historical records of backup activity performed across a plurality of backup engines.
2. Description of Prior Art
Most backup engines in use today provide for the repeated, regular electronic transfer, over a network, of data from the point at which it is in regular use to a medium, such a magnetic tape, for the purposes of securing a fallback situation should damage occur to the original data. Included in the list of such software programs, are programs that work on relatively small amounts of data, sometimes on a one-computer-to-one-tape-drive basis, and others that work on very large amounts of data, with banks of tape drives that are used to back up data from potentially thousands of computers connected to a network. Mostly, these backup engines use what is known as a xe2x80x9cclient/serverxe2x80x9d model. In the context of backup, this means that there is one computer (the xe2x80x9cserverxe2x80x9d) that controls and manages the actual backup activity, and other computers (the xe2x80x9cclientsxe2x80x9d) that get backed up by the xe2x80x9cserverxe2x80x9d. In this scenario, the backup tape drives are usually connected directly to the backup xe2x80x9cserverxe2x80x9d. There is also usually more than one backup server, each of which is responsible for the backup of data of numerous clients.
A central function of the activity of backup is the ability to xe2x80x9crestorexe2x80x9d data in the case of damage to the data that is in use. The backup server computer too usually controls this restore process. Understandably, the time it takes to recover data, and the confidence that the data recovery process will succeed, are two critical aspects of the backup and restore function as a whole. Disk drive capacities and data volumes, and consequently the volumes of data to be backed up, have historically been increasing at a greater rate than the backup server speed, tape drive capacity and network bandwidth are increasing to handle it. Accordingly, new technologies have been added to help. Such new technologies include fiber-optic cables (for fast data transfer across the network), faster chips, tape drives that handle more tapes, faster tape drives, xe2x80x9cStorage Area Networksxe2x80x9d and so on.
The activity of backup has become more and more critical, as the importance of the data has increased. At the advent of the desktop xe2x80x9crevolutionxe2x80x9d, that is, when people first started using personal computers (PCs), almost every piece of important data was still stored on one, single computer, possibly a mainframe or a minicomputer. As the numbers and types of computers proliferated, particularly on the desktop, and the purpose for which these desktops were now being used, making the data on such computers increasingly valuable, many different products designed to backup data were created and put into the marketplace. Now, there are some 50 or more different backup products in use by organizations and private individuals. Generally, but not always, such backup engines (products) have a reputation for being difficult to use. When there is an exception to this, the backup engine often has other, perhaps related, limitations (e.g. the amount of data is can back up is small).
Not all backup engines perform the same function. Thus, it is frequently necessary to have two or more different types of backup engines in use within the same organization, especially in large organizations. Anecdotally, one company has as many as 17 different backup engines in use somewhere in their organization. This is referred to as fragmentation. In large organizations, is has become necessary to hire expensive expertise to manage such large backup and restore services. The more varied their backup engines, the more expensive this becomes. Also, for large organizations, it has become increasingly likely that scheduled backup activities will fail. Because of the extra complexity of running a variety of backup engines, and because of the shear number of backup activities that need to take place regularly, failed backups often go unnoticed in a sea of extraneous backup information. An additional problem is that beyond a certain number of hours, perhaps minutes, if identifying a failed backup takes too long, then it often becomes too late for meaningful corrective action to be taken. As a result, large organizations often take an expensive xe2x80x9cbest guessxe2x80x9d approach. Anecdotally, the level of confidence that large organizations live with regarding backup success is said to be about 80%. In other words, it is expected that no more that 4 out of 5 backups will be successful. Almost every large organization will relate experiences where data was lost because they mistakenly believed the data was been backed up.
Also, a problem that is of increasing significance is the fact that there is currently no practicable means of charging 3rd parties for backup services rendered, even though the sharp increase in organizations providing that service for pay is expected to continue.
In the marketplace today there are several backup reporting products available. Each works with only one backup engine. There are no known patents relating to any of the following backup reporting products.
1. Legato GEMS Reporter(trademark), which provides trend analysis and text-based failures analysis. This product works with Legato NetWorker. It is built to handle up to approximately 4 or 5 average-sized backup servers.
2. Veritas Advanced Reporter(trademark) 3.2 from Veritas is similar to GEMS Reporter.
3. SAMS Vantage(trademark) provides statistical reports from backup activity of Computer Associates ArcServeIT product.
No known prior art combines backup statistics from a plurality of backup engines with monetary values to produce billing reports.
No known prior art provides billing reports based on backup activity statistics.
No known prior art uses an association with owners of data to control the grouping of data within such a billing report.
No known prior art allows the association of backup data amount pro rated pricing to control the amounts appearing on such billing reports.
The present invention provides a method of visually representing historical records of backup activity across a plurality of backup engines, stored in a relational database, in such a way that key backup performance metrics are made obvious. In addition, said records are also organized and represented in such a way as to allow organizations to charge 3rd parties for backup services rendered to those 3rd parties.
Backup Engine
The term xe2x80x9cbackup enginexe2x80x9d is used throughout this document. It means any software program, or part of a program, designed to backup electronic data onto a data storage medium such as magnetic tape. Veritas Backup Exec(trademark) and IBM Tivoli(trademark) Storage Manager are two well-known examples. There are over fifty backup engines generally available in the market today, and new ones are being created regularly. Although this patent does not name each specifically, the term plurality of backup engines is meant to cover any combination of two or more such backup engines.
SQL
All of the SQL used throughout the preferred embodiment adheres to the industry-standard known as ANSI SQL, American National Standards Institute, Structured Query Language. IBM invented the original SQL language during the 1960s.
SQL Server
As a place to store historical records of backup activity, the invention makes extensive use of, and accordingly references in this document to, a software program known as Microsoft SQL Server (SQL Server). One or more databases can be stored in and managed by an installation of SQL Server. This embodiment uses one database, named xe2x80x9cbackupreportxe2x80x9d. The tables directly or indirectly pertaining to this embodiment are detailed in FIG. 5. See also patents [applied for simultaneously to this patent].
Using SQL Server is the preferred embodiment.
BRG
The term BRG, an acronym used in this document for xe2x80x9cBackup Report Graphical User Interfacexe2x80x9d, is used to represent the embodiment disclosed in this patent application.
RDB
The term RDB, an acronym for Relational Database, is used throughout this document to represent the underlying source of data for reports described in this embodiment. The RDB contains historical records relating to backup activity across a plurality of backup engines. In the preferred embodiment, the RDB resides in an implementation of Microsoft SQL Server(trademark) (described above).
Backup
The term Backup means the actual transfer of data that is in regular use, usually across a network, to a data storage medium, such as a magnetic tape, for the purposes of retrieval at a later date, should the data in regular use become damaged.
Backup Engine
The term Backup Engine means any software product or program that is used for the purposes of Backup described in the previous paragraph. For example, Legato NetWorker(trademark), Veritas BackupExec(trademark), BakBone NetVault(trademark).
BX
This term is used throughout this document to denote a software component that provides an interface to a plurality of backup engines. By interface, it is meant the ability to request and receive historical records of backup activity from those backup engines.
This invention provides:
1. A method of organizing and visually representing the data in such a way as to allow a person viewing the data to more quickly and reliably identify backup failures and successes.
2. A method of organizing and visually representing several (3, in this embodiment) additional levels of information to the user of the invention in accordance with an electronic request for information.
3. A method of organizing and visually representing historical records of backup activity originating from a plurality of backup engines in such a way as to enable a person viewing that representation to quickly and reliably identify trends in amounts of data being backed up by that plurality of backup engines.
4. A way to manage associations between owners of specific computers that get backed up, monetary charges for backups to such owners, and organization of such data in billing reports in such a way that the owners of computers being backed up can be billed for those services.
5. The invention combines backup statistics from a plurality of backup engines with monetary values to produce billing reports.
6. The invention provides billing reports based on backup activity statistics.
7. The invention uses an association with owners of data to control the grouping of data within such a billing report.
8. The invention allows the association of backup data amount pro rated pricing to control the amounts appearing on such billing reports.
Provides a means for including backup servers for subsequent examination by the invention.
Accordingly, a system and method in accordance with the present invention has significant utility over conventional backup activity examination.
Microsoft SQL Server was used in this embodiment. Other multi-purpose relational database servers such as Oracle(trademark), SQLAnyWhere(trademark), InterBase(trademark), FoxBase(trademark), Rbase(trademark), or Xbase(trademark), Dbase(trademark) could have been used. Any other database would be considered an alternative embodiment.
The preferred embodiment uses an industry-standard xe2x80x9cgrid-stylexe2x80x9d component known as XGrid(trademark) as a container for the Backup Failures report, but any one of several different grid-style components could have been used instead. It is indeed also possible to use a non-grid container that allows objects such as red and green squares to be created inside the container to implement the same essential method.
The preferred embodiment uses a product called ReportBuilder(trademark) Pro for Billing Reports. Alternative embodiments are possible. There are numerous software products like ReportBuilder on the market, any one of which could have been used to produce the same result using a different embodiment.